JetBlue adds another Florida-California cross-country route

JetBlue is adding a cross-country route that will connect two of the carrier’s “focus cities.” Starting May 3, JetBlue will fly one daily round-trip flight between Fort Lauderdale and Long Beach, Calif.

The airline will fly the route with its Airbus A320 aircraft, restarting service that JetBlue discontinued in 2011.

“Our Fort Lauderdale and Long Beach focus cities offer such great travel experiences for our customers with their convenient terminals and great flight schedules,” Dave Clark, JetBlue’s VP – network planning, says in a statement.

Now, JetBlue's resumption for Fort Lauderdale-Long Beach service comes as it has beefed up schedules in both of those cities during the past year.

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JetBlue has long been the biggest carrier at Long Beach. The Fort Lauderdale route will give JetBlue up to 35 daily flights to 13 destinations. The service also comes as JetBlue begins using all 35 of its flight “slots” at the capacity controlled airport. Previously, a number of JetBlue’s slots there went unused, but the airline announced plans to use them after rival Southwest was given temporary control over some of the slots JetBlue had not been using.

In Fort Lauderdale, Long Beach will become JetBlue’s 56th nonstop destination. JetBlue has been building up the South Florida airport into a major base, saying it expects to be flying up to 140 daily flights there “in the coming years.”

JetBlue's Fort Lauderdale-Long Beach nonstop is the second cross-country Florida-California route to be announced by the carrier this fall. In September, JetBlue revealed plans to add nonstop flights between Los Angeles and Orlando, another of the airline's fast-growing focus cities. That service begins Jan. 5.